Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1977, Page 205

hidden one’. A member of the owners’ faniily took it with him to Copenhagen.
where he sold it to Arn i Magnusson in 1687.
2. Hrokkinskinna.
Hrokkinskinna (Hr.), so named by Torfæus “ob vetustatem & sqvalorem,” was
one of twelve vellum mamiscripts whicli Torfæus eollected in Iceland in 1662 on
behalf of the Danish king Frederik III. There are good reasons for supposing that
Torfæus obtained the manuseript at Holar.
The greater part of Hr. is from the beginning of the fifteenth century, though
an additional four leaves containing a defeetive text of Hernings påttr Asldkssonar
were added to the manuseript in the sixteenth century. Among other doeuments
in the same hånd as the main portion of Hr. is a charter issued at Logmannsblib
in Eyjafjorbur in 1423. A marginal note States that Hr. was owned by hustru
Ingunn Arnardottir of Grund, whose husband was the principal party to the
charter from Logmannshlib, and it is natural to suppose that the manuseript. was
written for her.
3. The lost common original of H and Hr. (*H).
Since Hr. cannot be a copy of H, both manuscripts must be deri ved from a com-
mon original (*H). *H need not necessarily be identical with the original manuseript.
of the compilation, but it is impossible to distinguish in practice bet.ween the latter
and the archetype of H and Hr.
The terminus post quem for *H is provided by the actual text, which mentions
an occasion on which the sarcophagus of Olaf the Saint was opened; this event
must have occurred after 1268 and most probably after 1280. The terminus ante
quem is the date at which H wras written, w’hich cannot be fixed more precisely
than to the period c. 1320-1380, although it would seem reasonable to assume
that the manuseript belongs to the third quarter of the century. Two errors in
H show, however, that *H (or an intermediary between *H and H) not only used
the insular form of the letter v but also was written in single, wide columns, which
would point to a date not mueh later than c. 1300.
II. THE TEXT OF HEIMSKRINGLA IN H-HR.
1. The manuscripts of Heimslcringla.
The principal manuscripts of Hkr. are a group of six Icelandic coilices, all of which
were in Copenhagen prior to the year 1728: they are Kringla (K), AM 39 fol.
(39, incomplete), Codex Frisianus (F), Eirspennill (E), Jofraskinna (J) and Gullin-
skinna (G). Three of the group (K, J and G) were burnt in the fire which destroyed
the University Library of Copenhagen in 1728, and can be studied only through
the medium of copies. In addition to these six manuscripts there are various short
fragments and the like, as well as two lost manuscripts known only from transla-
tions and excerpts, viz. Peder Claussøn’s manuscript(s) of Hkr. and the lost
Uppsala MS DG 3 (*U).
HkrF.T did not utilize the manuseript material to the full and its editor, who
did not correctly appreciate the internal relationship between the manuscripts,
attached too mueh weight to the readings of K. This was pointed out by Storm
as early as 1903, but a stemma displaying the manuscript-relations of Hkr. did
* Hil
Kongesaga 13~